WADA-Report Part II Recommendations:1. THAT the IAAF publicly recognize the assistance provided by the whistleblowers in establishing the facts of corruption in Russian athletics and offer any necessary support in their relocation and employment.

UK’s former European 800m champion Jenny Meadows talking about an exchange she had with Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu:“For some reason I have always felt she was different. When we raced she would always smile and be friendly. But in Daegu I noticed a very different look on her face when she beat me into third. We were going back into the village, she was really remorseful and told me, ‘I am really sorry you didn’t make the final.’ There was something behind those eyes. … I don’t forgive any other Russians but I do forgive her. … We wouldn’t know what was going on in Russia without Yulia and her husband. Every athlete should be really grateful to them.” (letsrun.com)

David Walsh, 3.1.2016You would imagine the [IAAF]committee will want to speak with the Stepanovs, who know so many of the Russian cheats and their backroom facilitators. This is the point where things could get slightly uncomfortable for Taylor.After trying in vain for five years to get the anti-doping world to move against Russia, the whistleblowers turned to Seppelt, who did outstanding work in telling their story. The Stepanovs know that without the journalist their story might never have been told. They believe in Seppelt’s integrity and his commitment to exposing wrongdoing.For them, and for us, it is confusing that the IAAF should send three warning letters to Seppelt. If in his role as an inspection committee member Jonathan Taylor wishes to speak to the whistleblowers, he will first have some explaining to do.

"Earlier in the week he’d written a short letter to Russian whistleblower Vitaly Stepanov, thanking him for his efforts in exposing corruption. ... This expression of gratitude came five months after Coe assumed office, almost 14 after Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov and their son Robert were forced to flee Russia.

But, of course, some of the federation’s highest ranking people didn’t want whistleblowers. The report recommended that the IAAF “publicly recognise the assistance provided by the whistleblowers in establishing the facts of corruption in Russian athletics and offer any necessary support in their relocation and employment”. It is bizarre the IAAF should have to be told.

There isn’t one IAAF official who has spoken with enthusiasm for what the Stepanovs have done, even though the whistleblowers have been demonised by Russian sports officials.

The exception is United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) chief executive Travis Tygart. “Yuliya and Vitaly are true Olympic heroes,” he said. “They risked everything to stand up for fair play and against corruption. This is the very essence of why the Olympics are so valued. Their names should be alongside Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin.

“While maybe not politically convenient for some, the only proper response is for those in authority to embrace Yuliya and Vitaly, demand that the Russian federation stop attacking them, and insist they apologise. This should be the first step before anyone considers the Russian federation for possible recertification. How can you say you will change when you are still attempting to crucify those who stood up for truth?”

But the Russians will not be asked to apologise for their vilification of the Stepanovs." (David Walsh, 17.1.2016

Thomas Bach und Craig Reedie antworteten auf diesen Brief. Vitali Stepanov reagierte mit einem Schreiben in dem er sich für die Antworten bedankte. "I was happy to learn that WADA is not questioning mine and Yuliya's motives and supports Yuliya's request to be eligible to compete in any IAAF competitions. I hope that IAAF and IOC take that into consideration when they make a decision in Yuliya's case."

Council: "The fourth recommendation is that any individual athlete who has made an extraordinary contribution to the fight against doping in sport should also be able to apply for such permission. In particular, Yuliya Stepanova's case should be considered favourably." (IAAF, 17.6.2016)

Taskforce: "The Taskforce therefore unanimously recommends that the Council (1) amend Competition Rule 22.1(a) with immediate effect, to permit exemptions where an athlete has made a truly exceptional contribution to the fight against doping in sport; and (2) refer Yuliya Stepanova's application to an appropriate panel as soon as possible, with a recommendation that it consider that application favourably." (Taskforce Note relating to Yuliya Stepanova, Taskforce Interim Report)

Hardly had their story been broadcast than the death threats began. Shopping at a store in her home city Kursk, Yuliya’s mother was told by a stranger that she had raised a traitor. In Berlin, the traitor and her husband waited for the sports world’s help. And waited. They hadn’t the right to work in Germany and when they then moved to the US, they still didn’t have the right to work.

The one-roomed apartment they got in the US made the low-rent place in Germany seem palatial. Wada loaned them some money but then briefed a journalist about the financial support they were providing the whistleblowers, making it seem like the Stepanovs were being well taken care of. Next day, Vitaly Stepanov wired the loan back to Wada.

...

This Russian woman went to meetings with men as powerful as Sergey Portugalov, Alexey Melnikov and Vladimir Kazarin and secretly recorded their con-versations. She did the same to fellow athletes, including her friend the London 800m champion Mariya Savinova.

It is not an exaggeration to say she risked her life to get the truth out there and it is certain that had she been caught the consequences would have been grave. ...

And as Wada released the latest grim chapter in the failed War Against Performance Enhancing Drugs last week, I smiled at the latest twist in the Stepanovs’ lives. For as we learn that anti-doping controls in Rio weren’t anything like what they should have been, Vitaly has got a job and Yuliya is going to get the financial support that will enable her to keep running.

Their lives had already improved through the generosity of the public who supported a public fund-raising effort. Ninety-thousand dollars was contributed by 600 donors from countries all around the world. ...

Vitaly Stepanov had let the sports and anti-doping authorities know that he wanted to continue working in anti-doping. He was thinking that Wada or the IAAF might want to help. After all, he’d been doing their job unpaid from 2010 to 2014. There are people at Wada, not the top brass it should be said, who have provided tremendous support to the couple, but the agency itself didn’t have anything it could offer. The same for the IAAF — nothing at the moment.

Vilified for refusing to allow Yuliya to race under a neutral flag in Rio, the IOC said it would like to help the couple. What kind of help had they in mind, Vitaly asked. Vitaly Yuliya and Robert met Thomas Bach in the US. Bach offered Stepanov a job as an anti-doping consultant and offered Yuliya a scholarship that would allow her to continue her career.

“Do you know what will happen if things are not being done correctly?” Vitaly asked the IOC boss. He did. The new man, now on the inside, will blow the whistle.

Pilloried in the west for allowing Russia to compete at Rio, Bach has now been vilified in Russia for supporting the Stepanovs. The cartoon showing the president handing over a bag of gold to Vitaly Stepanov reflected how Official Russia saw the support for the traitors.

You may question Bach’s motivation for helping the whistleblowers. Have no fear though for the Stepanovs. If Russia couldn’t corrupt them, there’s no way that the IOC will.

David Epstein: I’ve talked to people both at IOC and WADA, and a number have felt that this decision was made specifically to keep Yulia out. No matter what the impetus for the decision, what if some athletes say, well, great, she shouldn’t be in Rio even though she exposed this and served her full ban?

Jack Robertson: The IOC questioned her motives for speaking out. David, for all of my career I ran informants and whistleblowers, and every time I had to determine what their motivation was for cooperating. Some for revenge, some for money, some for lighter punishments, some to atone for sins. In my 30-plus years in investigations, I have never ever met two people that had more pure motives than Yulia and Vitaly. Yulia was not even seeking a reduction of her sentence. She was entitled to that, but she took the full ban, and never once requested from me that it should be lessened. They had to leave everything, not just careers but their home, to hide in the U.S. Their sole motive is to allow future Russian athletes be able to compete without doping if they don’t want to. In Russia, they’ve been labeled ‘traitors.’ The one thing she ever asked for in return was to be able to compete as a clean athlete in the Olympics. If she said nothing, she’d have a home and a salary and be in Rio right now.

"The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), the International Olympic Committee, the International Association of Athletics Federations, Russia — they all knew. Grigory Rodchenkov was a ticking time bomb, a scientist who knew more about sporting corruption than any man alive. ... They understood, too, that he was preparing to tell his story. After Wada’s independent commission recommended he be banned for life last November and that his Moscow anti-doping laboratory be shut down, his Russian bosses tried to keep him sweet. They offered a new job, lower profile but secure.

...

During his years at the laboratory, Rodchenkov was seen by those who worked with him as a brilliant scientist, a charming man, a world expert on athletics but also a central player in a corrupt system. In that Wada report he was accused of extorting money from athletes in return for burying positive drug tests. He denies having done this. Everything else, though, he admits.

He speaks fluent English and had a way of dealing with journalists that told his interviewers next to nothing but left them feeling he knew everything. In the milieu of Russian sport, Rodchenkov was the all-powerful godfather.

A positive drug test? He could make that go away.

...

Inside the corridors of world anti-doping, people knew he was corrupt but considered him too big to be brought down. A low-level narcotics unit in Moscow investigated him and his sister Marina for steroid possession and illegal distribution in 2011 but only Marina went to prison. Rodchenkov then made sure she did not stay long behind bars.

He told the story himself about the Wada investigation into his lab in 2013. They temporarily withdrew the accreditation because of suspicions about sample switching and buried positives. While people wondered whether it would be reinstated in time for the Sochi Games, he got a call from a Wada official reassuring him everything would be fine. Sure enough, he was back in charge at Sochi.

When Russian authorities offered him that pensionable job and quiet after-life in November, far away from the front line of sport and doping, they proposed a solution that was anathema to the man himself. He would have less power, less money, less relevance. Before they knew it, he had left Moscow for his new home in Los Angeles.

The ticking of the bomb grew ever louder.

He chose Los Angeles because of his friendship with the film-maker Bryan Fogel. They had met in 2014 and had begun working on a film project. Once in LA, Rodchenkov had more time and it was agreed the documentary would be released in September. Officials at Wada, the IOC and the IAAF exhaled a deep sigh of relief.

They could make decisions about Russia’s participation in the Rio Olympics in August without the pressure of Rodchenkov’s revelations. Powerful people in these organisations wanted Russia in Rio, regardless of the extent of the country’s involvement in doping.

Vitaly Stepanov had exposed Rodchenkov as a corrupt anti-doping lab director but their shared status as sporting refugees drew them together in the US. There were long Skype conversations about their respective journeys, with Rodchenkov reminding Stepanov that whatever he saw or experienced during his three years at Rusada, it was nothing compared to what he had experienced at the anti-doping lab.

One man knew there were a lot of bodies. Rodchenkov knew where they were buried.

Stepanov filmed his conversations with Rodchenkov, knowing that if the scientist changed his mind about telling the truth, there would be evidence of what he knew.

Around this time CBS’s news magazine show 60 Minutes persuaded Stepanov and his wife to be interviewed about their experience as whistleblowers...Vitaly Stepanov revealed some of the things Rodchenkov had told him,

Stepanov wanted Rodchenkov’s story out there before the Rio Olympics, not after them. ...

After the 60 Minutes story Rodchenkov and Fogel decided to get their own story out there. They spoke to journalists from the New York Times on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

...

The IOC was not amused. An organisation not known for reacting hastily to adverse publicity called the report “very detailed and very worrying”.

The IOC also wanted people to understand it was not their fault and did so by pointing out that Wada had agreed to Rodchenkov being in charge at Sochi. Wada’s reaction was strangely subdued, its leaders frozen in the headlights of the latest doping scandal. ...

As for the IAAF, it would have reacted to Rodchenkov’s story with mixed emotions. Those who run the sport might not have been impressed by the scientist’s dishonesty and the state’s deep-rooted cynicism but they would have been pleased that other sports were now implicated. Everyone knew that Russia did not dope track and field stars alone, and this story proved it."

zu Vitali Stepanovs Versuchen, die WADA zu informieren:

"...Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov, the husband-and-wife whistleblowers who provided the evidence that led to the original Wada investigation, left Russia in November 2014. After hiding out for months in Germany, they left for the US last year.

...

In April 2010 Vitaly Stepanov, who was then working at Rusada, wrote his first email to Stuart Kemp at Wada. They had met in the spring of 2008 and though Kemp was not one of the bosses at Wada, he was convinced by Stepanov’s story and was supportive. They continued to exchange emails for three years, with Stepanov detailing the corruption at the heart of Russia’s anti-doping system.

Eventually Stepanov was passed on to Wada investigator Jack Robertson. In April 2013 the Stepanovs had a secret meeting with Robertson in Istanbul. They gave him some of the steroids Yuliya had been given by her coach and secret recordings they had made to show the extent of the problem.

Robertson was committed and hugely supportive but higher up the Wada ladder, it appeared there was less support. In more than 200 emails to and from Wada, there is no contact between the Stepanovs and Wada’s top brass. No message from president Reedie, director-general David Howman, chief counsel Olivier Niggli or the then head of standards, Rune Andersen.

It seemed Wada’s top people did not want any direct involvement with the Stepanovs, something that sources close to Wada say is explained by a fear of upsetting Russia. Andersen’s response to the Stepanovs was particularly hard to fathom. Kemp was a senior manager in Andersen’s department and in a March 2011 email wrote: “Rune will be following up with a note to you wishing you well and asking why you left [Rusada].”

Stepanov had actually been fired by Rusada and this should have mattered to Anderson, whose job involved evaluating the work of the Russian anti-doping agency. But that note from Andersen never arrived and he did not get round to asking Stepanov why he had been fired. The information Stepanov passed on to Wada was damning. Shortly before losing his job at Rusada, he wrote this in an email to Kemp.

“Last week I went to the ministry and had a two-hour talk with Mr [Konstantin] Virupaev. He told me a lot of things straight forward. 1. Wada is not really battling doping, it’s all politics. 2. All countries and especially Europe are afraid of Russia and try to not let us win any medals anyway possible. 3. Russia will always work by double standards as prohibited list is mostly politics and there is no really bad health consequences for athletes.” ...

For almost four years Vitaly Stepanov gave Wada chapter and verse on Russian doping. Eventually Robertson realised the agency was not going to do anything and got permission from his bosses to put the whistleblowers in touch with the German journalist Hajo Seppelt.

People at Wada recall the scene at the Wada offices on the day after Seppelt’s first documentary. The word from president Reedie was for the communications department to monitor press reaction to the German television programme. If there was no significant follow-up, Wada need not react. Outrage followed on from the documentary and Wada had no choice.

Wada’s own explanation, from spokesman Ben Nichols, was that before 2015, Wada did not have authority to conduct its own investigations, and officials did not think turning the information over to Russian investigators “would have led to the scrutiny required”. Nichols said Wada was mostly worried that turning over the information would put the Stepanovs in danger and that Wada itself had suggested contacting ARD, Seppelt’s employer.

Its response to last week’s allegations by Grigory Rodchenkov showed Wada as weak and unconvincing. ..."

Vitaly Stepanov had exposed Rodchenkov as a corrupt anti-doping lab director but their shared status as sporting refugees drew them together in the US. There were long Skype conversations about their respective journeys, with Rodchenkov reminding Stepanov that whatever he saw or experienced during his three years at Rusada, it was nothing compared to what he had experienced at the anti-doping lab.

One man knew there were a lot of bodies. Rodchenkov knew where they were buried.

Stepanov filmed his conversations with Rodchenkov, knowing that if the scientist changed his mind about telling the truth, there would be evidence of what he knew.

He [Kamaev] had turned up at Rusada in the summer of 2010, at a time when the ministry of sports wasn’t happy with how the anti-doping agency was doing its job. Perhaps the most unhappy person at Rusada was Vitaly Stepanov, who had joined the agency when it was first set up in early 2008. Idealistic in the beginning, Stepanov soon learned.

At training camps, he would turn up to collect urine samples and be told who he could and could not test. “This is not how it works,” he would tell the head coach. But it was how it worked. Doping was part of Russian sport and the anti-doping agency was expected to play its part. Once he tried to test weightlifters but was told, “This is weightlifting,” meaning “are you crazy?”

He would tell his boss Vyacheslav Sinev what had happened. Sinev would listen but nothing much changed. Rusada would continue to test, athletes would be sanctioned but not those with the potential to stand on the Olympic podium. They were protected. Not everyone at Rusada thought Stepanov was crazy. His colleague, Oleg Samsonov, was supportive and they thought if they could decide who should be tested, that would shake things up. Of course they weren’t allowed to have any say.

Stepanov had a friend who worked in the planning department. “Prior to the Vancouver Winter Olympics [2010] he told me that the ministry of sports had a list of at least 15 athletes, cross-country skiers, biathletes, others, that were untouchable. Rusada were not to test them and if they did the athletes involved must know when they will be tested. The doping wasn’t just in athletics.”

...

Stepanov had a friend who worked at the ministry. They spoke occasionally and once his friend talked openly. “He was saying that whenever he has meetings with Mr Mutko [sports minister], Mr Mutko tells him to tell Rusada that in Russia, the ministry of sports decides everything in regard to sport.

“That we don’t care about Wada, we don’t care about international sports federations. We are in Russia and the Russian ministry decides who should be sanctioned and who should be heroes and wins medals.”

...

“He [Kamaev] came in, sat alongside the three Rusada directors Vyacheslav Sinev, [Igor] Zagorskiy and [Alexander] Derevoedov and spoke to them. He never spoke one word to me, never shook my hand. He came to bring in his own team and had no interest in getting to know people that the ministry of sports didn’t approve.”

Towards the end of February, six months after Kamaev began at Rusada, Vitaly Stepanov found a note on his desk. Rusada no longer had a job for somebody with his particular skills. Sinev, the agency’s executive director, was another to lose his job. Kamaev got Sinev’s job and from what Stepanov understood, the ministry of sports had got what it wanted. More control.

Partly as an antidote to the disillusionment he’d felt through the latter half of his time at Rusada, Stepanov started writing to the world anti-doping agency telling all he knew about corruption in Russian sport.

His emails were detailed and based not just on what he had picked up while working for Rusada but also on what he’d learnt from his wife Yuliya, who was an elite 800m athlete and part of Russia’s corrupt system. ...

Paul Kimmage, 15.11.2015:There was a moment during the press conference on Monday, as the WADA Independent Commission delivered its report, when the president, Dick Pound, highlighted this flaw: "Many sport organisations treat whistleblowers more harshly than they treat dopers," he said."...On Friday night, 'a mere 28 months' after failing to reply to a single email or call ...the IAAF announced that Russia had been provisionally suspended from all competitions. Coe, who has refused to be interviewed by Seppelt, made the announcement. "This has been a shameful wake-up call and we are clear that cheating at any level will not be tolerated. To this end, the IAAF, Wada, the member federations and athletes need to look closely at ourselves, our athletes and our processes to identify where failures exist and be tough in our determination to fix them and rebuild trust in our sport."There was no word of thanks to Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov.

A beacon of integrity and hope amidst the bleak landscape of fear, intimidation and doping is found in whistleblowers Vitaly Stepanov and his wife Yuliya (Rusanova) Stepanova. Vitaly is a former employee of RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency. Yuliya is an elite Russian middle distance runner. Fed up with the corrupt Russian sports system Vitaly and Yuliya decided to rebel. They secretly recorded athletes, coaches and sports officials discussing doping and even caught the WADA accredited laboratory director requesting payment of a bribe. These courageous whistleblowers were undeterred even though they knew that by exposing the system of doping in Russia they were risking their personal safety and would be ostracized.

Sadly and predictably, the Russian media has attempted to portray Vitaly and Yuliya as tools of Western political interests. As recognized by the IC report, “when those involved in doping activities are exposed, they almost invariably attempt to attack, discredit, marginalize and intimidate any whistleblowers.” The Russian sport minister has publicly attacked Vitaly and Yuliya, questioning the legality of the secret tape recordings they made.

However, whistleblowers are an essential check on doping in sport and must be encouraged. At the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, we have learned that insiders with detailed knowledge of the inner workings of a doping scheme can provide indispensable evidence, permitting anti-doping authorities to uncover the secrets of rogue chemists, doping doctors and performance enhancing drug (PED) conspirators. Without the help of those who have been on the inside, the secrets of doping conspiracies will frequently remain hidden from the outside world, increasing the pressure on athletes to dope and heightening a sense within the sport (a sense that is encouraged by those invested in doping) that PED use is unchecked, inevitable and irresistible. Our investigations into the BALCO and U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team doping conspiracies would not have ended successfully without the help of insiders who eventually turned against the wrongdoing and elected to follow a new path and help us clean up their sport.

Nevertheless, a wall of a silence, the so called omerta, still persists within sport, creating strong disincentives for truth telling. Even in the United States, athletes ensnared in a doping ring frequently fear for their personal safety and the shredding of their reputations should they come forward with what they know. A number of Lance Armstrong’s former teammates were ostracized when they admitted their involvement in doping and provided testimony to USADA. For instance, Levi Leipheimer, was quickly terminated by his Belgian Omega Pharma Quik Step cycling team and lost over a million dollars in income. This was just part of the price that Levi paid for telling the truth. At times he even feared for his safety and that of family members after it became known in the cycling world that he had testified before a federal grand jury.

Yet, for all the courage it took for cyclists to oppose the omerta in the professional cycling peloton it is apparent that the courage it takes to oppose the state sponsored Russian doping machine is of another level still. Vitaly and Yuliya are currently a couple without a country. At home in Russia, a home where they may perhaps never be welcome again, the concerted effort to trash their reputations is ongoing. Yuliya’s former coach, Vladimir Kazarin, called her a “traitor” recently on Russian television.

At this stage, with much of the detailed evidence of a doping conspiracy out in the open, it is mind-blowing that anyone would question the legitimacy of the whistleblowers coming forward. Even Russian President Putin, a former director of the FSB and before that a KGB officer for 16 years, has said publicly, for the benefit of western media, that the doping allegations in the IC report should be investigated, and he pledged Russian cooperation.

However, a different story is being spread within Russia where the truth is apparently too uncomfortable for sport leaders to confront. As the IC predicted, “many sports organizations treat whistleblowers more harshly than they treat the dopers on whom they inform.” Vitaly and Yuliya are now facing such retaliation.

Anna Glushenko, a Russian Athletics Federation spokeswoman, was quoted recently by Reuters saying, “They need to get citizenship (in a foreign country) and that's why they made this up.” In a media interview the malicious theme that Yuliya allegedly made her revelations in order to obtain a residence permit in Canada was echoed by Russian Sports Minister Mutko. For her part Tatiana Lebedeva, the vice president of the Russian Athletics Federation, has claimed the whistleblowers only hurt innocent athletes. These comments, which tend to incite anger and embolden others to attack Vitaly and Yuliya, make it clear why it was necessary for them to leave Russia once they had decided to reveal the hidden secrets of Russian doping.

A recent report out of Russia quoted a lawyer for several Russian athletes exposed by Vitaly and Yuliya as being poised to sue them for libel and defamation. Similarly, during the cycling investigation a number of whistleblowers, including even a journalist and the London Sunday Times, were sued by Armstrong and/or the international cycling federation. Such is the standard mode of operation of a doping conspiracy, it always seeks to crush those who have the courage to reveal the secrets of the conspiracy.

Thus, the more that the Russian media and sports machine attack Vitaly and Yuliya, the more we see that a chord has been struck deep within Russia. The more clearly we behold the dark, ugly, grotesque beast of state sponsored doping the more clearly we understand the courage it took to confront the behemoth.

1. The Council asked the Taskforce to get legal and technical input on Yuliya Stepanova's request to be granted eligibility to compete in International Competitions as a neutral athlete, independently of any reinstatement of RusAF, and to report to the Council with a recommendation.

2. The Taskforce notes that:

2.1 From 2007 to early 2012, Yuliya Stepanova took steroids and EPO. The IAAF charged her with blood-doping in January 2013, and she immediately accepted a two year ban, and served it in full, ending in January 2015.

2.2 She has been out of Russia since October 2014 (shortly before ARD broadcast the evidence she had gathered of systemic cheating in Russian athletics), and has been subject to drug testing by the IAAF as a member of its Registered Testing Pool.

2.3 From a technical perspective, she has met the qualifying standards for both the European Athletics Championships and the athletics competition at the 2016 Olympic Games.

2.4 From a legal perspective, her request could be considered if Competition Rule 22.1(a) is amended to permit exemptions where an athlete has made a truly exceptional contribution to the fight against doping in sport.

2.5 The Taskforce considers that Yuliya Stepanova has made a truly exceptional contribution to the fight against doping in sport. She took great personal risks in order to break open a doping culture that no one else on the inside was willing to expose, and no one on the outside was able to expose. That contribution has led to further investigations and disclosures. Without her contribution, the unique opportunity that now exists to fix the system would very likely not exist. Instead RUSADA and the Moscow laboratory would be continuing to operate in a compromised manner; coaches and doctors would be continuing to administer PEDs to their athletes; and those athletes would be continuing to compete in international competition with a wholly illicit advantage. Yuliya Stepanova has therefore struck a great blow for clean athletes everywhere.

2.6 Whistle-blowing is vital to the fight against doping in sport. From a policy perspective, therefore, the Taskforce considers it extremely important to send a very strong message to athletes everywhere that such contributions are highly valued.

3. The Taskforce therefore unanimously recommends that the Council (1) amend Competition Rule 22.1(a) with immediate effect, to permit exemptions where an athlete has made a truly exceptional contribution to the fight against doping in sport; and (2) refer Yuliya Stepanova's application to an appropriate panel as soon as possible, with a recommendation that it consider that application favourably.